Soulmates?
by aphpenmark
Summary: All Preben heard growing up was the lovely lady he would meet someday, what her words would be, how his mother couldn't wait to see how romantic her boy would be. The world revolved around the words on their wrists and who was saying them and what they would say back, and Preben… He didn't care for any of it. Maybe he was broken. [queerplatonic dennor/hints of sufin] [soulmates au]


Preben's mother always talked about soul mates. All he heard growing up was the lovely lady he would meet someday, what her words would be, how she couldn't wait to see how romantic and sweet her boy would be. He couldn't blame her, though, it was all anyone talked about. The world revolved around the words on their wrists and who was saying them and what they would say back, and Preben… He didn't care for any of it. Maybe he was broken. Maybe he just didn't understand the feeling of love yet, he was too young, too immature to see all of the hype, the reasoning, but.. He couldn't help but be afraid that words would really show up on his wrist. He wanted to be assured that he was normal, but he didn't want someone to love him like that.

He was happy with Berwald, playing video games every day, laying around with him, goofing off.. He just wanted friends. That's all he needed to be happy. Love was supposed to be the ultimate joy in life, but all he felt for it was anxiety. What if he couldn't force himself to marry someone? What was he meant to do then?

And what if no words appeared? He would be cast away. No one would bother with the broken boy who couldn't love, he knew that much. It wasn't true though, he loved plenty. He loved his mother, his father, he loved his friends Berwald and Timo, he loved the way the sun looked reflecting off of the lake in the summer, he loved his dogs, he loved music, he loved people as a whole. He just couldn't love… romantically. He couldn't love the way he was meant to.

The days before his eighteenth birthday, he could feel the fear building up inside him. Berwald was thrilled. He talked more than he ever did, wondering what the words would be. Wondering how he was supposed to deal with them not being Timo's words he had said when they first met.

"I still remember them… 'You look like a giant', he said." He always laughed whenever he remembered, Preben noted. Berwald was in love with him, and now what, he's supposed to leave him behind for someone he's never met before because of some tattoo? The system was broken for everyone. "I can't even tell him.. No one wants to date you unless you're their match… Won't ever know what it's like."

It was all a load of shit, as far as Preben was concerned. But there was no way of stopping it. You can't ignore fate, they would all say. That's all they ever said, they didn't care what any of the kids thought.

Preben's tattoo came first. 'You look oddly familiar…' it read, any Preben wanted to forget the words as soon as they appeared. He repeated them to himself in his spare time, sneering at how ridiculous it will all be. He imagined how they would look, how they would move, and he hated himself for it. He had to live in fear of these words, of this person, until the day he meets them. And who knows when that would be? Who could ever predict how long he would wait fearing the moment someone would tell him 'You look oddly familiar' not knowing the impact of their words. Not knowing how much they would ruin his life.

Berwald's words came the day after his. Seven in the morning he ran into Preben's room sobbing, holding up his wrist by the window for Preben to see. "You look like a giant". It didn't take long for Timo to show up. He nearly tackled Berwald onto Preben in his rush to hug him, grinning and muttering his script into Berwald's chest.

"You look like a giant.."

"I'm a gentle one though, promise." Berwald chuckled back.

Preben was happy for them, really. But he wanted some proof that the system was flawed. It had to be broken for someone more than him. Someone needed to show him that he wasn't really broken, that it wasn't his fault that his wrist was lying to him.

He heard them for the first time when he was nineteen, sitting in a coffee shop downtown. It was early, and the sun was just rising. It had snowed, the sun was shining, he was happy, and then it happened. His stomach tightened as the waiter turned to him, a look of recognition on his face as he muttered "You look oddly familiar…". It was an instinct, the way he replied. His stomach was churning but he shot back a simple "I should, I come here every week." back at them.

He watched his soul mate flash a look of fear. Their spare hand swung to their wrist, protecting their words from Preben as if they were afraid he was just joking. Just reading from their wrist to throw him off. He wished he had been, himself. He wished he could take the words back.

The silence was long and tense. They looked anywhere but each other, and Preben felt no flare of love on his chest his mother had promised him he would feel.

"I'm Preben." He blurted it out to ease the tension, to pretend that this was normal and their were no words anymore, to pretend that the whole thing just didn't exist.

"Einar."

Maybe, if they just ignored it long enough, they could forget.

His mother wasn't happy with him when he came home. His mother wasn't happy with him when he refused to take Einar on dates, when all he ever did with them was the same thing he would do with any other friends. It was the only way he could cope though. He didn't want to think of Einar as his soul mate, he just wanted to be their friend. It didn't change, like his father promised him it would. He felt closer, but he never felt any romantic inclinations towards them.

After a year, he told them. There was no use hiding his feelings with Einar, they were stuck with him, but he may as well be upfront about it. Make the whole thing a little less painless.

"I don't love you."

He told them when they were reading, curled up at the end of his bed.

"Nor I you." Einar smiled when they said it, kicking their legs out and laying them over Preben's comfortably. "I thought that much was obvious."

That was all that needed said, really. Preben let go, after that. He didn't mind the closeness anymore. He didn't mind the dates, the staying by one another's sides, the movie nights, the dinners out, the dinners in, any of it.

Einar was not in love with him, and he was not in love with Einar. The answer seemed much more simple than he ever expected it to be.

"Einar, I think I love you. No-romo." Preben laughed, settling down into bed next to Einar just as they were closing their book. Their lives melded together perfectly, he noted that morning. Their habits fit together, from Preben's noisy morning routine working in part as Einar's alarm clock, to the way they moved around each other in the kitchen perfectly while preparing dinner and dessert. It was comfortable, he decided.

Einar chucked at his joke, nudging his side and muttering back "I love you in the least romantic way possible, as well."

Maybe the idea of soulmates really was broken. Maybe some people weren't meant to find the love of their life, the person to make them realize romance was all they needed. Maybe Preben's love was no less real than Berwald and Timo's love. Maybe someday mothers would stop telling their children to wait for the one to break them out of their feelings, and maybe the world would stop revolving around romance.

But for now, Preben was happy accepting the fact that sometimes the world takes things wrong. The tattoos never tell you who your soul mate is, the world could never predict that. The tattoos point you in the direction of someone who can help you, that's all. Sometimes you love them, sometimes you don't. Some you may learn from. Some you may have just needed an excuse to spend more time with.

"Do you regret the tattoos at all, Einar?"

"Oh, I regret all they stand for. But no, I don't regret you, if that's what you're wondering."


End file.
